Meet the Parents
by JailyForever
Summary: A short one shot of when James took Lily home to meet his parents.


**A/N:-**

 **As it is now officially my 22** **nd** **birthday here in the UK, I thought to myself that it is only right that I give all you amazing people a present from me to you.**

 **It is another HP one shot, which I have expanded from a head canon I wrote a couple of years ago.**

 **Enjoy!**

Meet the parents!

"James, I think we should drive to your parent's house tonight," she said as she came out of the bedroom wearing a gorgeous midnight blue dress, which hugged her figure perfectly and made me want to tear it straight off and do unspeakable things to her.

It was the third time she had changed her outfit, and I was suddenly regretting telling her that my parents came from old money. It had started to bring out insecurities in my Lily that I hadn't imagined possible for her to have. It seemed that in the muggle world coming from money was a big deal, just as it was in the wizarding world to some of those uppity 'let's keep our blood pure' types, like my buddy Sirius' family. Those stupid pure blood manic pricks!

"Honey, why do we have to drive?" I complained, it was bad enough that she had gotten me to get a driving license the muggle way, I shuddered just thinking about that torturous few months and how during my test I had to resist the urge to place a hex on that ridiculous muggle, Mr Henderson, who thought he was so much better than everyone else. Yes I used legilimency on the bastard, and I wasn't sorry for it either, or for the little surprise rat infestation that he got that night. But now my beautiful girlfriend expected me to use the damn thing.

Why oh why did I have to be putty in her hands whenever she asked something of me? Sure I put up a fight, but I always gave in. Sirius and Remus kept calling me whipped whenever they got wind of the fact that I had given into my girl again. Whenever this happened, Peter would just stand there and nod in agreement, and chuckle in what he believed to be all the right places. And I was sure this time would be no different, when I eventually 'let her win'.

Lily just placed her hands on her hips, and stared at me. "James," she purred softly making me go weak at the knees. "I just think it would be nice to travel by car for a change, don't you think?" She batted her eyelashes at me and pouted.

This was the first weapon in her arsenal, and it was very rare when I would give in at this stage.

"No Lils, you know how I feel about driving!" I half growled. "It's stupid and why oh why do there have to be so many god dammed pedals and gears."

I found myself getting flustered just thinking about how Peter for the first time in his life had gotten to tease me, yes me, James Potter about something I wasn't good at. It also didn't help when he gloated about passing his test within a matter of weeks of starting lessons. Whereas I, had failed my test not once, not twice, but six freaking times. Lily had encouraged me and simply stated seventh time's the charm, and lucky for me it was. It irked me, so much that Wormy had bested me at something, but I guess I could not deny the poor fellow that much given how utterly hopeless he was at everything else. I swear that he would never have survived Hogwarts without Sirius, Remus and I.

"Oh James you truly haven't even given it a chance, you've resented it since your very first lesson and it only worsened when Peter passed before you," she half argued back, her face alight with amusement. It was uncanny how Lily had repeated the exact thoughts he had just had back to me. "You'll never appreciate the feel of the open road ahead of you able to go anywhere you want, anytime you want, if you don't open your mind to the thought of enjoying it."

"I already can go wherever I want whenever I want Lils; it's called apparition!" I exclaimed as ran my hands through my hair in exasperation.

"That's not the point. It's not the destination that matters when you drive; it's the journey, the excitement of letting the open road take you to some unknown destination."

Lily's eyes were alight with excitement. I could never and probably would never understand her fascination with driving. I suppose this is what you get when you fall for the most beautiful girl in the world, no universe, and she happens to be just as much a part of the muggle world as she is the magical one. But dammit I loved that girl and I could never refuse her anything and she knew it.

"Okay," I finally sighed. "But one condition sweetheart," I whispered as I approached her and wrapped my arms around her waist and pulling her as close to me as humanly possible.

"And what's that?" She asked as she raised her eyebrows at me.

"You have to drive that awful..."

Lily gave me a stern look, as if to challenge me to finish my sentence.

"awfully lovely contraption," I finished, smirking at her, and she smiled back at me in silent agreement, before promptly changing the subject.

"So will this do for meeting you parents?" she asked uncertainly, trying to pry herself from my grasp.

"It's perfect, just like all the others, you could go wearing a bin liner and manage to pull it off; although I have to admit you look positively delectable in this dress," I informed her before I crashed my lips against hers.

"Lils don't be nervous," I told my gorgeous girlfriend for what felt like the one hundredth time since we left the small flat we were sharing in the heart of London.

Since our conversation earlier, Lily had proceeded to change her dress another five times before deciding on a floral dress, that looked as perfect on her as every other one she had tried on.

And for some insane reason I had allowed Lily to talk me into driving like a muggle to my parent's house, despite our agreement earlier that she would drive. The things we men do for our girlfriends.

I pulled up just outside my parent's house, thankful that there was a big parking space. That was another thing I hated about driving – having to park the freaking thing when you were done with it. I drove straight into the spot, only just managing not to utterly destroy the hideous contraption in front of our car.

After what felt like an eternity, I finally had the awful thing parked, and I'm sure my face was red with anger and frustration at the car, and with embarrassment as Lily hadn't stopped laughing the entire time. Turns out it didn't matter how big the bloody spot was, it was still just as difficult to park. Seriously I don't know how muggles do it. I'd have to ask Lily's parents when we went to dinner at their house next week.

I jumped out of the car, contemplating whether to send the car back home, and walked around to Lily's side of the car and opened her door. See what a gentleman I am.

My fingers twitched as I reached for my wand, and as if reading my mind Lily turned and glared at me before saying, "Don't you dare James Potter!"

I removed my hand from my pocket, and placed my arm around her waist and pulled her close to me, and knocked on the door.

I could already smell the positively delicious food my mother was preparing, and if it wasn't for the fact that my girl was right next to me, I probably would have been salivating like a dog – no wait – like Sirius. I laughed internally at my own joke, but I seemed to have let out a huge guffaw.

"What's so funny?" Lily asked, as feet were making their way towards the front door.

The door flung wide open before I could even think about giving Lily an answer, and we were greeted by the adoring face of my delightful mother.

"Oh my little JJ," she exclaimed enveloping me a big hug.

Mum," I whispered looking down at my feet uncomfortably, as she went onto her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek. No one except Sirius had ever witnessed my mother's doting affection before today, and she just had to go and call me her little JJ in front of my Lily. How embarrassing! The first time Sirius had heard my mum call me that, he had given me stick for months, and called me it whenever we were alone plotting our next prank to pull on Snape, that Remus and Peter would no doubt frown on. Curse Remus for becoming such a stick in the mud when he became a prefect.

"Oh how rude of me, come in come in," my mum said ushering us both inside out of the cold, and promptly taking our coats with a flick of her wand.

"JJ," Lily laughed under her breath, and I was sure my face was bright red.

"Lils, my dad is called James. My mum started calling me JJ so father and I would stop answering her at the same time," I hissed under my breath back at her, my ears burning. "It just kind of stuck."

My mother escorted us into the living room, where my father was sat on his old, worn out arm chair that mum had been trying to make him get rid of for decades.

"Mr and Mrs Potter, you have such a lovely home," Lily spoke quietly from next to me, looking around the living room in awe at only a handful of the many antiques that my family possessed.

"Oh dear, we'll have none of that Mr and Mrs malarkey, you can call us James and Harriet," my mum said with a hint of dismay in her voice.

My father nodded and grunted his agreement from his armchair.

"Mister, Missus, would you like me to dish up tea, whilst you and your guests take your places at the table?" a voice squeaked from the doorway.

I turned to see Zisny, the house elf I had insisted mum and dad get a few years ago, to lighten the load for them and help around the house. They weren't getting any younger and I feared for my mother's safety. For some reason she insisted on doing the housework by hand, she said in filled the hours of the day.

My mum and dad had refused on several occasions, but I finally put my foot down when I arrived home from a night of causing harmless mayhem in the town with Sirius, and found my mum unconscious on the floor, under a chair, after trying to reach something on a high shelf. My dad had gone to bed early that night, and he when he was asleep there was no waking him, so he hadn't heard my mum's fall. I had rushed my mum to St Mungo's, where they admitted her for a broken hip, and light head trauma. Even though they had fixed her up in a jiffy, I couldn't help but feel I could've lost her if I had been at school.

I had got Zisny for them before the next day was out, and the rest is history. My mum let her do very little around the house, only allowing Zisny to fetch objects from higher places, and clean them too, and only ever let her cook dinner on a Sunday evening, and assist on other days of the week. I wished she would let her do more, but my mum could be a stubborn old mule sometimes.

"Yes please Zisny," my mum responded, following Zisny out of the room and into the kitchen. Knowing my mum, this was probably to make sure that Zisny didn't need any help, and then try to do it all herself.

"Well son," my dad said, standing up slowly from his armchair, looking so much more frail than he the last time I had seen him. "Let's make our way to the dining room."

Dinner was soon over, and my beautiful Lily was as charming as ever. Needless to say my mum and dad loved her and just had to casually dropped into conversation, that Lily was all I had ever talked about for the last 7 years. My Lils had blushed when they mentioned that, but it was no secret that I had had it bad for her since the very first moment I laid eyes on her.

My mum quickly whisked Lily away to show her some of the antiques we had upstairs in storage when she mentioned that she loved the Picasso painting that hung in the hall, and lamented about how it was such a shame that the original was a lost antique. My father had quickly told her that the one we owned was the original and then oh so subtly mentioned that we had one of the infamous 'missing' faberche eggs. Lily had squealed with delight, and didn't even get the chance to ask if she could see it before my mum insisted she follow her.

My father started rooting through a drawer looking for something, whilst he asked, "How on earth did you manage to land a diamond girl like Lily son?"

"To be quite honest dad I have no idea," I replied, as I watched him struggle to find whatever it was he was looking for. "Dad can I help you?"

He carried on rooting ignoring my question, and carried on talking away. "She's a real keeper James, especially if she can put up with your friends, especially Sirius," he said as he chuckled to himself, no doubt recalling one of the stunts that Professor McGonagall had written home to my parents about. She had a tendency to always blow what Sirius and I did out of proportion. Like the time we caused a small explosion in the library, the way she had gone on about it you would have thought we blown the entire room up. No the entire school.

"AHA! Got you," I heard my father exclaim. I looked towards his hand and saw him holding a dark blue velvet box. It looked familiar, and I was positive I had seen it somewhere before.

"Now son, like I said, that Lily of yours is a keeper," he said, slowly turning towards me. "So you better get a ring on that finger before she gets away," he told me and handed me the box that he had been searching for.

I opened up the box and inside was a beautiful ring. I recognised it as being my grandmother's ring. When I was younger my dad used to sit me down and get the ring out and tell me that when I found the right girl, he would give me the ring. Obviously at the time I had thought girls were to be avoided like the plague, and always used to respond that the only girl for me was my mummy. I chuckled internally as I remembered that, it both felt like so long ago, but also just like yesterday. I missed those simpler times, sometimes.

I stared at my dad, completely speechless.

After what could have been seconds, or hours, I finally found my voice and said, "Wow dad, thanks."

My mum and Lily joined us not long after and I quickly placed the box into the inside pocket of my dinner jacket for safe keeping. Lily was gushing about all the amazing antiquities we had in our storage room, and couldn't believe we had so many original pieces.

A couple of hours later, Lily and I left my parent's house. My mum had given Lily and I warm embraces before we left, and my dad had simply given me a sly wink from his armchair whilst Lily gave him a hug too.

I was walking on air, thinking of all sorts of ways I could propose to Lily, as I looked around to see if I could find a good place to apparate from, when my eyes fell on the car. Lily tossed me the car keys and laughed.

"Oh Lils, can't you drive back?" I half whined.

One look from Lily, and I was making my way to the driver's side of the car, after opening the car door for my soon to be fiancée.

After fumbling around trying to get the key into the ignition, and a further ten minutes, full of cursing, trying to get the car out of the spot we were on our way back home.

"So Lils, can I say I told you so?" I asked, taking my eyes off the road momentarily.

"And what exactly would you need to say that for huh?" she questioned me, as she raised her eyebrows at me.

"Well," I said as I fiddled with that horrible thing they call a gearstick, "I told you there was no need to be nervous and I was right. My parents loved you."

 **A/N:**

 **I'll address this first because I know many suspect that Charllus Potter and Dorea Black are James' parents, but it has neither been confirmed nor denied by the almighty JKR.**

 **However from evidence I believe they are not, for the simple reason that Dorea would not have been on the family tree in OotP if she had been the one to take in Sirius after he left home.**

 **So I decided to name his father James and for the purpose of this one shot, I think it worked. And I thought Harriet would work for his mother – I figure that Harry could have been name after his grandmother in a roundabout way.**

 **So please let me know what you think in a review.**

 **xoxo**


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